The Gospel According to Verdu (a Steampunk Novel) (The Brofman Series) (33 page)

“Oh, boy,” came a nauseated groan from Candice. “And I thought I hated flying by airship! Bleck! This is ten times worse.”

Fenimore looked down at Chenda as she quickly grew smaller and smaller. She had already turned her eyes away from him and was defending the remaining resistance fighters.

“Candice,” Fenimore said, trying to bar the tears from showing in his voice, “we’ve kept you from losing your head once already today. Pull yourself together. So we are dangling from unsteerable balloons hundreds of feet above a hostile city with no way of safely getting down. Let’s not panic.”

Impatiently, Candice replied, “As I’ve tried to tell you several times, Fenimore, we will have no problems getting down. Look there! It’s the
Brofman
, come to collect us.”

Out of the glare of the sun came the gleaming silver outline of the airship
Brofman
, moving fast. Before the three balloonists could expend all their hoots of joy, a hook line snagged them out of the air and pulled them aboard.

Captain Endicott’s boot knife slashed the cloth that held the balloons, and the trio tumbled onto the deck—a pile of knees and elbows that were quickly separated.

The captain scooped his love into his arms. He tried not to show his terror at her appearance, splattered as it was with filth and blood. He kept checking her over with eyes and fingers until she laid her hands on each side of his face. “It’s not my blood. And perhaps, after a good meal and a bath, I might just live.” She gave him a genuine smile, one that made him realize that she was there, real and safe. With utter joy, Captain Endicott pulled her into a forceful kiss, an embrace so filled with relief and passion that, for the third time that day, Candice was left breathless.

chapter 20

Climax

Even with the close-cropped hair and the bulky flight coat, it escaped no one’s attention that Chenda was a woman. As she traveled from the outskirts of the city to the palace marketplace, strangers assuming they knew how to handle this out-of-place woman were making a mistake that would be their last. Long had it been the norm in the empire that women cowered before all men. But no woman in Tugrulia had the power or the will that Chenda had on the day she walked into Kotal.

She was fully practiced and resolved to use her gods-given gifts. She had come to realize over the last few months that less was more. Knowing which of the elements to call on and when was the key to preserving her reserves of power. That was the wisdom she had learned. But knowledge gave her only half a mastery of her gift; the hard portion was stamina. It had been thrilling to expend all her will and energy at once, and it was tedious to dole it out in dribs and drabs. But, standing among the bloodied and dying in the palace marketplace now, she was glad she had worked so hard on her discipline.

She looked toward the axman, screaming defiantly and proudly as he lay bleeding on the paving stones. He had bested all of the attacking guards, but by the look of the ever-expanding pool of blood surrounding his weakening form, he would never take another head. Pride was all he had the strength for now, and his taunting voice trailed off to silence.

One of the resistance fighters flanking Chenda turned his gore-splattered face to her and said, “Ha-Ting Vokah. Dis execution man say he ees de Fist of Ha-Ting Vokah. He vanted du to know before he die.”

“Who’s Ha-Ting Vokah? And why should I care?” she replied.

“Ha-Ting Vokah ees de eldest son of de emperor’s heir. Dis attempt on Verdu, eet vas a struggle for succession. He vas sent to kill Verdu, as Verdu ees de next een line after Ha-Ting Vokah’s leettel brudder, Tercius.”

“Why kill the person behind you in the line of succession? Shouldn’t he kill the emperor instead? Hold that thought.”

At Chenda’s direction, the remaining members of the resistance had rallied around her and fought their way to the lone, studded-iron door that led into the palace, the one that Verdu had been dragged through. Now archers—reinforcements of the imperial guard—were forming up along the top of the wall opposite her small entourage. Without some cover, she and the rest would be filled with arrows in less than a minute. Their best escape was through the heavy iron door.

She thought to herself,
Why blast and burn a door off its hinges, when simply asking the metal in the lock to dissolve would open it?

A second later, the door swung open to an exhale of relief all around, and the resistance breached the palace. There were only five who had survived the battle, but Chenda was glad she could help even these few to escape the bloodbath of the market. She wished she could hide the survivors and continue on to find Verdu on her own, but even wounded and blood-spattered, they all looked to her like puppies, devoted and loyal to her for life. They would kill to stay at her side and protect her, but she knew better—they would just slow her down.

Once they were all through the door, Chenda pressed it closed and sealed it by bonding the hinges. She looked around; the room she found herself in was long and narrow, with the marketplace door in the middle of the long wall. Each scuffle and scrape of her companions’ boots echoed around the empty stone room. An unfortunate guardsman who had lived only long enough to make it through the door lay still and pale in a dark stain on the smooth stone floor. There, where he’d been abandoned by his brother guards, a streak of blood began.

Chenda turned to the resistance fighters around her. “We’re here for Verdu. We need to find him. I need him. Quickly, follow this trail; it’s his blood, I think.

“It’s no secret we came in this way, and the imperial guard will be here fast. Run.” She did not have the heart to say that if any got separated or lagged behind, she would not be able to stop to help them.

Nameer pressed the wads of pink sheets against the still open half of the long slash across Verdu’s chest while the surgeon worked feverishly with needle and sinew. Each stitch pulled through his skin felt like fire, but Verdu snarled through the pain and kept still.

“That was”—he flicked his eyes to the surgeon to see if he was paying any attention to the conversation; he was not—“unexpected. I thought you fixed things with the resistance so they would take a shot at the executioner, not have him take a snap at me. Were you betrayed?” Verdu flinched as the needle pierced a particularly sensitive bit of flesh near his sternum.

“No. I think not. The resistance was there, fighting for Candice as was arranged at the last minute. I do not think they were expecting to see you on the dais, however.”

“Until a short time ago,
I
wasn’t expecting to be standing there.” Verdu snarled again. The emperor had decreed that he should stand next to Candice at her execution. His intention was to punish Verdu, make him watch up close as his friend was put to death. The emperor was sure Verdu would attempt to intervene in some way at the execution, and then the people would see that the new prince was really a resistance sympathizer. Nameer, however, had advised Verdu that he would be better off to toe the line and play hard-hearted. He knew that most in the crowd would only recognize that Verdu was a prince of the blood, and all he had to do was act like one to keep the spectators pleased.

“Nevertheless, you were there and you were brutal enough in appearance and carriage that you won back some of the respect of the major families. You were seen, in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing. That’s what matters. What I can’t explain is where the archers went. They never made it to their assigned places.” Nameer sighed. “That was an attempt on your life, you know—a nearly successful one.”

“It was Ha-Ting Vokah. The axman was screaming about it as I was dragged away,” Verdu said.

Nameer shook his head and gave a bit of a sly smile. “Your reputation is growing. Ha-Ting thinks you are a threat, so he’s moving against you. I am surprised that little whelp had it in him. But now that he has . . . if I were a gambling man—and I assure you I am not, as a rule—I would place even money on him also having taken aim at either his brother or his father. If one makes a move for securing succession, he eliminates the threats behind him as well as the placeholders above. I will have to inquire as to the health of his next of kin.”

Bateem, who waited close by on the off chance his prince had any needs, watched as a trickle of blood escaped the slowly closing gash on Verdu’s chest. It rolled like a tear across the prince’s skin and disappeared into the soaked bedclothes. Bateem wanted to weep himself, afraid as he was for his most favored master. He stood silently by and bit his lip.

“Perhaps we will be lucky, and Ha-Ting will carry on this vile work for us and do in both of his kinsmen,” Nameer mused. “Then all you will have to do is challenge Ha-Ting. I would hate to see you have to murder Tercius.”

“Why?” Verdu asked. “I will not say that I relish any of these killings, but why not Tercius?”

“He’s a simpleton. He has the mind of a child, and is no threat to anyone. It would be as easy as killing a lamb, but I can see no honor in it. But, he cannot be emperor. He would only be the puppet of the first manipulator that came along. Rumor has it he simply takes orders from his nanny and questions nothing.”

Verdu hated to think on it. He knew that if Tercius, or the people who pulled his puppet strings, stood between him and the liberation of the Tugrulians, he would have to be eliminated, no matter how distasteful it might be.

“Let us not borrow trouble. See who Ha-Ting Vokah has culled from the line, and then we will decide,” Verdu said. He glanced over at Bateem and nodded, and the clerk hustled off to see who was alive and dead in the wake of Ha-Ting’s scheme.

“Lincoln! Altitude—NOW!” Captain Endicott roared toward the wheelhouse. A moment later the
Brofman
shuddered as it slowly banked and circled higher in the sky.

“Let’s get Candice belowdecks and have Kingston take a look at her.” The captain scooped up his sweetheart, the smile never wavering as he looked at her filthy and bruised face. Candice, equal adoration in her eyes, began to flap and protest.

“No! Don’t you dare. You put me down this moment.” She swatted at the thickly built man until he set her on her feet.

“What’s the matter now?” he asked.

“First of all, why are we climbing? Chenda is still down there. She may be more powerful than all of us put together, but she can’t take on the entirety of the empire on her own. She’s going to need our help!” Candice noted the numerous improvements in firepower on the airship and harrumphed. “Looks like you are just itching for a fight.”

Captain Endicott, surprised and delighted to hear the scolding in her tone, stroked Candice’s cheek with a finger and said, “I told you I would come knock on the emperor’s door personally if it meant I could be with you. I just brought a little backup. I mean, I’m not crazy.”

“Well, maybe just a little,” Candice said. “And, as much as you hate it when I get airsick on your ship, you’re really going to hate it when I bring an infestation belowdecks.” She scratched her hair absentmindedly. The deckhands, Stanley and Spencer, took a small step backward from her. “There were rats in the prison. And that means fleas at best, possibly lice, certainly cockroaches, silverfish, and more spiders than I can count. You can’t imagine how vile that place was.” Candice’s eyes lost focus for a moment as she remembered. “Sponging off at the tap belowdecks is not going to get rid of the buggers.” She plucked at her ruined clothes. “Please just let me throw these over the side?”

Her captain took charge. “Stanley! Start bringing a few buckets of hot water up onto the deck. Spencer, get some towels and whatever extermination ointments Kingston has in his medical supplies, and send him up here to check her out. I want my girl taken care of.”

As the deckhands hurried to obey his orders, he shouted after them, “And bring the new guy up here.” Then, having satisfied himself once more that Candice was really there under his arm, he finally turned his attention to Fenimore, who was holding a trembling Tugrulian woman around the shoulders. “This must be Ahy-Me? Chenda told us a lot about you,” the captain said.

Fenimore gave her no time to answer. “I need a monowing. If you won’t go back to help my wife, I will.” His words came out as a growl.

“Nice to see you, too, lad. But no. Chenda told us that if we got you first, you were supposed to stay with us. She can handle herself, and she’s going to see if she can help Verdu. And don’t you grouse at me. I’m just the messenger here. You can take it up with your
wife
when she gets back. I’m staying out of it. Oh, and Ollim has a message for you from Chenda.”

“Who’s Ollim?” Fenimore shouted.

“I am,” said a voice from the stairs. A tall, swarthy Mae-Lyn man with a limp came up from below. His arm was in a sling. He tried to smile at Fenimore, but he winced in pain instead.

Ollim’s eyes opened in surprise. “Interesting. Well, fine. She said to me this: ‘Tell Fenimore that he is to stay on the
Brofman
until I call for him or I will boil his liver while he’s still wearing it.’” Ollim looked rather pleased with himself for having delivered the Pramuc’s words to her intended recipient.

Candice snorted. “That’s Chenda,” she said.

Fenimore ground his teeth. He recalled the conversation he had had with Chenda at the very beginning of her time as Pramuc about boiling livers, and he knew that the message was truly from her. Beyond that, she meant it: he was to stay put. He turned his frustration toward Ollim. “Who
exactly
are you?”